


The Heart asks Pleasure-- first

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Love Confessions, Mistletoe, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 23:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8820958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: He'd waved her through the door and she'd thought, fleetingly, that she shouldn't have presumed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ultrahotpink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultrahotpink/gifts).



“I didn’t want to kiss you under the mistletoe,” Jed said. She’d wondered when he’d chosen to sit on the sofa next to her instead of the armchair he usually preferred, but it was a cold night and it was warmer closer to the fire. She was tired and had had to set down her copy of Galois’s paper, unable to attend to it sufficiently. She had another book open on her lap, some volume of Dickens she could follow with less effort, but she admitted she was primarily just letting the fire’s light and warmth play across her face and she wished she dared shuck off her boots and stretch out her stockinged feet as she would have at home. Jedediah had seemed inclined to silence as well, engrossed in a journal when she glanced at him, and she hadn’t expected him to say anything so…provocative. She’d felt a chill at his words that were unequivocally a rejection and hadn’t waited for him to go on.

“It’s good that you didn’t, then,” she snapped, but she could not conceal the hurt in her tone.

“No. Christ, you mistake me. I didn’t want to kiss you in front of anyone else, I didn’t want you to think it was only because of the holiday, the tradition, I didn’t want you to doubt,” he said and she raised her eyes to his and saw his expression, earnest and considerate, frustrated but not with her.

“Oh,” she said and paused. What would she doubt, what did he mean to say? He sidled closer to her, picked up one of her hands in his.

“I can see the questions in your eyes, I’m telling you so badly and I have thought for so long what to say! I must assure you, I was far more eloquent alone in my room, all those times I couldn’t speak, than I am now, here with you and finally free,” he said. So it was done, the end of his marriage. There had been much correspondence and his face had been grim so many times these past few months. She had not been sure what would come of it and there were too many reasons not to ask. He’d sounded more bemused with his conversation than downcast at his solitary state. And still he held her hand in his; she could not feel the firelight on her face anymore, just his gaze.

“Perhaps, you might try again? So I may understand you?” she offered.

“I must abandon all elegance then, I think, and say it simply. I’m in love with you. I want to kiss you without an audience, for a very long time, and show you how deeply I care about you. And when I stop kissing you, I want to ask you to marry me. I want to hear you say yes,” he said, not rushing through it. He was unequivocal and his eyes were so lovely and dark, his smile hopeful, a little afraid.

“Yes, Jedediah. Though, that is out of order. Will it do?” she said, smiling back at him. She thought he would speak, would be startled and overcome by her directness, but she was wrong again. He closed the distance between them in the moment after she stopped talking and cupped her face in his two hands before he touched his lips to hers. It was tender and chaste, such a gentle kiss, and then he dropped a hand to her waist and moved the other to angle her face and it was something else—desire and unthinking animal hunger, the taste of him in her mouth, their mutual eagerness for each other instead of the next breath, she was not just loved, she was cherished, entire and complete. He kept kissing her, moving his lips against her, his tongue stroking her, murmuring things and finding a way to be pressed ever more tightly against her when she hadn’t thought it possible, until she could not think at all. She was dizzy with it, with him, and he felt that, moved his mouth to her throat, the side of her neck, where he could talk into her ear between kisses.

“I love you, God, I didn’t think I would ever get to tell you, oh Molly, this is everything, to hold you like this, this is what I couldn’t risk before, that I’d forget everything but you, your sweet mouth, love, Molly, my Molly,” he crooned and confided. She felt her own affection for him like a sunrise, a struck match, the summer ocean like silk shaken out upon the earth and felt dazed and yet so much more real where he touched her, his mouth, his hands, his voice in her mind. She could have bettered Galois now except that her hand was not made to hold the pencil, but only to trace his cheek, curl around to the nape of his neck. She let her fingers card through his curls and heard him gasp, then pull back from her. She could hardly believe her bodice was still neatly buttoned, her lace collar flat, her boots laced; she felt naked under his regard but entirely safe, delighted in and admired. It was very sweet to be Molly and she almost laughed with the joy it evoked. Jed looked at her, he was almost breathless and she knew she’d done that. He couldn’t stay quiet, this newly revealed Jedediah.

“Will you marry me? I know what you said but…I need to hear it again, I need to see you say yes with my kiss on your mouth, I need to be sure--”

“Yes. Shall I say it again? Yes. I will be your wife, your Molly, yes,” she interrupted and his hand on her waist tightened against her stays.

“Molly Foster. Oh, you have made me happy, so happy,” he said. “I will make you happy, Molly, I promise.” He had, he did, he would—nothing troubled her now, nothing could.

“Then next year, next year will you kiss me under the mistletoe? At home, when everyone has left after Christmas dinner,” she asked, blushing with pleasure to imagine it, how there would be no need to stop, for him or her, until sleep made them dream of what they’d just left behind.

“Yes, I’d like that very much,” he said and kissed her temple, letting the last of the firelight cool the flames in their own cheeks, watching gold become ash and not minding.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my mistletoe response, take 3, for ultrahotpink, who wanted Jed and Mary to kiss under the mistletoe. I decided to see how full on romantic I could get. Galois is Évariste Galois (French; 25 October 1811 – 31 May 1832) a French mathematician born in Bourg-la-Reine. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals, thereby solving a problem standing for 350 years. His work laid the foundations for Galois theory and group theory, two major branches of abstract algebra, and the subfield of Galois connections. He died at age 20 from wounds suffered in a duel.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


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